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Working somewhere in between art and science, you aim to generate discussion about the relationship between technology and people. How would you define the role and purpose of design? And how do you define critical design?
AD: The question of art and design is problematic. A lot of people want to see us as artists, but we definitely see ourselves as designers trying to push the discipline forward, asking questions about design and through it. In fact, we launched the term critical design ten years ago in order to describe our work. Sometimes people think it simply means criticism; that we are negative about everything, anti-consumerist and against design. Some people relate it to critical theory; to Frankfurt school and anti-capitalist thinking. We are definitely aware of it, but then again not in that category either. Critical design is about critical thinking – about not taking things at face value. It's about questioning things, and trying to understand what's behind them. In essence, our objective is to use design as a means for applying skepticism to society at large.
[caption id="attachment_1403" align="alignnone" width="549" caption="a/b – "a sort of a manifesto that positions what we do in relation to how most people understand design" – by Dunne&Raby. Typography: OK DO."]
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You have compared design to art, using film and literature as examples of genres that are critical yet create pleasure. What do you think design and art can learn from each other?
AD: I think that art shouldn't need to exist. In an ideal, utopian world, everyday life would be so rich, meaningful and challenging that we wouldn't need this separate category called art. I kind of feel that art exists because design has failed. Learning from artists, designers should become bolder, more imaginative and critical. I'm not sure if art needs to learn from design, though.
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In Design Noir (2001), you wrote that "beneath the glossy surface of official design lurks a dark and strange world driven by real human needs". Do you feel that contemporary products do not match people's needs – and has this improved since you wrote Design Noir? Do you think that people are reacting to that themselves and how should they be involved in design processes?
AD: I think the internet has expanded the range of possibilities for pleasure and for fulfilling one's personal desires and fantasies, no matter how strange you are. But this still doesn't apply to products, which remain essentially functional. However, the background or the infrastructure of products has definitely transformed. Before, if you were obsessed about something unusual – like I was about strange radio cultures – it was hard to find any information about it.
AD & FR: Involving people in design processes relates to the do-it-yourself culture which we are not so interested in. Everyone can start making and modifying things themselves, but we believe it's important to have experts who can do special and beautiful things that are beyond the abilities of non-professionals.
AD: I get annoyed when people think that the DIY culture has made professionals useless. However, there are a lot of independent – yet professional – designers out there who offer radical products they create on their own.
FR: They are like activists; bottom-up designers. We like the story of activism, that there is room for free inventors. A good example is designer 
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Thinking that Finland hasn't really been the design country worth its reputation after the golden era of the 1950s and '60s, we started by discussing what made Finnish design interesting back then. Having to make the most out of the little that Finland had after the Second World War, design was blended into production, and a forward-looking spirit of collaboration between different disciplines generated intrepid, even utopian, ideas.
Marikylä ('Mari' village in Finnish) was a village designed together by the founder of Marimekko 
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Another classic Finnish brand springing from a lifestyle, 
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An interesting contemporary design brand that respects Finnish traditions and skills yet renews them open-mindedly is 
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Another new brand that we feel has potential to turn design products into classics is fashion label 
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The book also contains many musical and sonic references – sentences like “They were busy looking at each other with clicking metal eyes.” or stories about a band called Sonic Flower Groove after an album by the Scottish group Primal Scream. Would you say that you experience places through their sonic environment?
Being a musician I obviously have to pay a lot of attention to that. One reason behind the Sonic Flower Groove episode is that the first time I discovered Berlin was when I came here on tour with Primal Scream in 1987. So I was thinking what if it was reversed, that I was actually coming from Berlin and experiencing Scotland in the same way. And I guess that happened with many places, I discovered them as a musician. Music was a way to get my travel expenses paid.
How would you describe Berlin, your current home city by these attributes?
Berlin is a very quiet town. It has made me lose interest in pop music. The main sound on the streets is the birds singing. Germans like to see their cities as extensions of the forest and there are trees everywhere. And that’s very different from e.g. London where there is a lot of pollution and most of the sounds come from traffic or small speakers in every corner in every sandwich bar… And time is money. In that sense, Berlin is much less capitalist, much less toxic. And you can hear it. It’s a very avant-garde, experimental city. Even when you go to concerts you often end up listening to field recordings or the sound of a contact microphone being scraped up and down, sounds of ping pong balls or balloons. All this could be seen as utterly pretentious in many other cities but here you don’t have to have an aim or a commercial purpose in what you do. One can escape all sorts of obligations and necessities. That’s probably one reason why I have stayed here for so long.
Scotland number one hundred and three reads: “A computer makes a Scotland seem almost unnecessary.” Could this thought be applied to all distant places with internet access – like Finland, my home country, which you even refer to in the book (Scotland 136) – or is it rather a comment on a lack of identity?
Well, I think we’re seeing a crisis in national identity. I was quoted in a magazine saying that my true motherland is the internet. I feel like wherever I travel I’m always in this country called the internet. Or maybe it’s the operating system that counts – and I do almost feel a certain patriotism towards Apple computers. However, there’s another part of my identity that’s very Scottish. Whatever that is.
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You have lived in major cities around the world. What makes you move, and what made you leave Scotland in the first place?
It’s just a pattern I established very early because of moving with my father’s work when I was a child. After studying in Scotland I left for London to make it in music – a thing that all the Scottish musicians do. London felt like a bigger version of Scotland where more things were possible. Since then, my whole life has been motivated by appetite for certain things in certain cities. I’ve been lucky not having to work and being free to go wherever, even if it has made me very poor sometimes. Tokyo is my favourite city in the whole world. If my books are successful, that’s exactly where I’m going to go next.
How does the change of living environment affect your work?
When I was in Japan I felt quite isolated because I was a foreigner and I couldn’t speak too much Japanese. I found that my Scottish identity was becoming more important there. The album I made in Tokyo even has these rather strange Scottish songs on it. Berlin has brought up the need to experiment with sound because that’s just what people do here. I can spend my mornings at home writing something and the rest of the day is free for discovering something new. Then again London was a very commercial city so I tried to be successful and make lots of money. Living and working abroad makes you realize how only half of your personality is your own to control and the rest is really open to influence. I mean, we’re all chameleons in some way and the environment does change you. There’s a dialectical process going on between the environment and your personality.
Lessons learned is a series of writings by Hans Park depicting the life of a Tokyo architect. The fourth part of the series explores the idea of designing and encouraging societal change. The topic is related to Hans’ work with Dekimasen, an organisation that he co-founded for finding keys to positive societal development in Japan.
"I never have time to laze around."
Experiencing it
I have recently grown an interest towards social change, and not only exploring it but also delivering it and promoting it as a source for personal development and a tool against boredom. In Asia, observing change is effortless when looking at speedy economic and urban development. However, change in social attitudes lags behind. Meanwhile, somewhere else the development of egalitarian social attitudes flourishes while urban development remains stagnant. Why is this?
In places, communities and nations where the collective memory and the experience of change are fresh, it is easier to find the fringes that will grow to challenge the status quo. These communities are probably also good at putting a handle on change as a tangible activity suited for their needs, visions and hopes.
The question is, why are some communities better at seeking change, producing it and adapting to it while others stand still. The communities which understand the value of change are also likely to understand that the engine for change can be anyone. It can be started up by anything. Change is not an inherited talent – it needs to be practiced, experienced and developed for it to find its place in a society.
No, we can’t
Many never experience positive change. People live in the margins of society, belong to discriminated communities or fall into a category that does not generate enough representation for their voices to be heard. In places where voting is not enough to achieve a better future, other public-based mechanisms need to be discovered. The question remains if there is a way to bypass government, special interest think tanks and the media to create change.
In January, shortly after Barack Obama took office, I gathered with friends in Tokyo for dinner ending up in a conversation on the seemingly impossible notion of positive and enduring change in Japan. The general opinion was that there is little or no hope for social change here, and that pursuing change is pointless. No, we can’t, we chanted. In the midst of optimism for change in America there was something relieving in admitting powerlessness in this part of the world and approaching change through negation.
Early 2009 Tokyo launched its now unsuccessful Olympic Games 2016 bid with its Japanese slogan ‘Because of Japan, we can’ (Nihon dakara dekiru). However, for us, ‘Because of Japan, we can’t’ (Nihon dakara dekimasen) seemed more appropriate and inspirational. And with these ingredients and the decision to dig deeper into the local inability for change, the Dekimasen project was born.
Finding it difficult to envision what Dekimasen could turn into we asked people about the areas in which they feel they have no voice or no power to bring about positive change for themselves or in the society. The common reply to the question was ‘I don’t know’ but with more time for contemplation the answers grew personal, diverse and interesting. The round of interviews with people triggered the idea to document and share topics or issues that the public finds difficult to overcome in Japan.
The Dekimasen project is an exercise to create change in a place that rarely sees it. Starting by looking for clues and keys to systemic ways of gathering information and voices of the public for the public we try to create a categorised ‘database of voices’. This will hopefully open doors for more ideas and conversations that lead to a future of many positive changes. Perhaps one day we can.